Advice for my 17 year old daughter with over 100 credits done... Computer/IT Focused.

[EDUxplorer]

UoPeople is not a "real" university in the eyes of many universities like Georgia Tech. At least, not yet. She will need a degree from what's (formerlly) known as Regionally Accredited universities. Right now, UoPeople is Nationally Accredited, though it is in candidacy status for Regional Accreditation. An NA school might be  perfectly acceptable for employment purposes, but it kind of sucks for continuing education.

I could be mistaken about Georgia Tech not accepting NA degrees, like those from UoPeople. If I am correct, she might or might not be able to use a Bachelor's from the University of Cincinnati, but GT would completely ignore any credits she earned from UoPeople. They just currently don't exist. She could wait and hope that UoPeople gets RA status. If it does, I think her degree would count as RA because it was completed during the candidacy period; I'm not sure about that, however.

So she started at Cincinnati State, where she has most of her credits, then transferred them to UoPeople since it was a quick path to a BS in CS, but knowing they were only NA and not RA, she also transferred her credits to the University of Cincinnati.

Looking over the Georgia Tech information using the link on edX they don't say anything about RA vs NA... Her current plans are to apply to Georgia Tech with her UoPeople Degree for Masters in Cyber Security. She also plans to do the new Masters of Information Tech on UoPeople.

Her BS at UoPeople will be done next month. Her BS at UC will be about a year or so out because she will do her last classes in the spring and then finish her year-long senior project next year.


Just tonight, after posting, we found the Ph.D. in Computer Science program at Capitol Technology University. We are planning to reach out on Monday to see if a Masters from UoPeople would be an acceptable degree for her to move into their program. She has been for the last 4 years as a web developer for a local 501c3; before that, she had a paid internship with a Fortune 500.

Question: why is she getting so many degrees?

In the State of Ohio, starting in the Summer between 6th and 7th grade, if you can place into college classes via exam, the state will pay for your classes. She placed in the Spring, end of 8th grade, and started her first classes in the summer between 8th and 9th. Her goal was to earn the AAS in Computer Software Development, but she also needed to meet high school graduation requirements. She discovered that she enjoyed college classes more than high school so then just loaded super heavy on them during COVID.

This put her in a position to get an Associate of Science (general) done.

Knowing she would also transfer to UC (University of Cincinnati) for the Software Engineer Degree, she picked up some extra classes that were part of the more basic Software Development degree. This happened to line her up for the Software Engineer Degree at Cincinnati State.

During a meeting session with her advising team, they looked at some degree Audits and realized that she was 3 classes short of the Information Systems (computer/business) degree. She knew she wanted to do Paralegal or law eventually, so she picked up Business Law, Accounting, and Management.

That is how she ended up with 4 Associate Degrees in 4 years. It wasn't planned at first just saw opportunities. 

Question: What does she want to do with her life?

Web App Dev and Pen Testing. We also have a couple of close family friends that make their income (well into 6 digits per year) as bug bounty hunters.

Her focus has been on Software Engineering, Web Development, and Cyber Security. Anything else Computer related could support her knowledge base.

Law would benefit in that line of work, and she has already spoken to several law firms that said they look to contract people with those skill sets and have a hard time finding them.

Education because her high school has given so much to her and opened so many doors above and beyond what they were required to do, she has a secret seeded passion for wanting to part-time teach and give back. I don't see it happening, but she has been nonstop so far, and at this point, I'm just trying to research and help her the best I can.

Having so many degrees in such a short period of time, in such diverse fields, may actually hurt her future employment prospects.

I think what she wants to do is nicely for the degrees and certifications, but IDK... What are your thoughts? How could it hurt?

Thank you a ton for your feedback, questions, and thoughts!